The Mask or The Face
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Author: Carl Horn
Source: Originally published in the February 1997 issue of Animerica
Dated: February 1997
Neon Genesis Evangelion, written and directed by Studio Gainax's Hideaki Anno, began on Japanese television in October of 1995 and finished in April of 1996. The next month it won the Animage Grand Prix fan poll, despite its (relatively) low budget, its competition from big-name sequels such as Gundam Wing and Macross 7, its lack of nationwide coverage on Japan's smallest network, audience controversy over its sex, violence, cruelty, and religious imagery, and a two-episode finale that provoked such confusion and outrage that a future remake of the ending was announced. What tilted against all of that, in the balance, was the fact that Eva is the boldest TV anime show yet seen in this decade, and for that reason one of the most important.
Hideaki Anno used as a starting point for Eva one of anime's dustiest premises: son-fights-baddies-in-father's-robot, and managed, through the imaginative design power for which studio Gainax is famous, to make its look and trappings seem avant garde and original. But it was not the show's intricately carved mask that made Eva, but rather its face: a face that is ultimately not one drawn by the show's character designer, Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, but the face of a real person—Hideaki Anno, who made personal honesty the show's guiding principle. He put into Eva's cast and narrative true feelings on his four-year battle with an almost suicidal depression, the mutual enmity between parents and children, even the indelible, junkie's disgust he sometimes feels for himself and his fans—about the otaku fantasy Anno gets he and his audience high on, and how it contributes to a Japan drifting into dreams and nightmares. Mysterious and ornate as Eva's conspiratorial story of esoteric theology and ultra-tech mecha is, it is Anno's resolute urgency of now that burns through, and it was (presumably) this thing that audiences in Japan sensed—that because this anime show had actually meant something to the real person who made it, it might mean something real to them as well.
While practically none of A.D. Vision's cast for Eva have a similar sound to the original Japanese voices (for example, Eva's young male protagonist, Shinji, was voiced originally by a woman—a practice also sometimes followed in the West—but is voiced in ADV's version by a man) they all seem at least potentially serviceable. A voice doesn't necessarily have to sound like the original if it can convey the original character's personality. But it would seem that the actors aren't being told enough about their characters to portray them properly. Eva's female protagonist is Misato Katsuragi, who acts immature and excitable at times, but is also a responsible, 29-year-old professional staff officer. Yet in the ADV version she is voiced as if she were a 14-year-old like Shinji. In a show like Eva, which has three distinct generations among its main characters, and whose conflicts with each other are revealed as a major theme of the series, it would seem important that the characters sound their age.
Minor voices are also often ill-rendered, in a way that seriously detracts from the atmosphere of the show. In Eva, the organization fighting the enemy, and the agency that the characters' lives revolve around, is called NERV. NERV (German, simply, for "nerve"), and SEELE ("soul")—the mysterious council that sits over NERV—both had in the original series an ambiance comparable to the government in The X-Files: that is, one of professional, intelligent agents caught up in the conspiracies of their shadowy, omniscient superiors. But in ADV's version, the NERV "men in black" grunt like thugs, and the members of SEELE speak either in voices either macho or effete—the point in both cases is that they are hard for the viewer to take seriously. Although Eva is a robust, sometimes comedic show whose forms may be influenced by classics of Japanese robot anime and monster movies, it seems simplistic to treat it as a tribute or rehash, rendering it in English in tones of good old schlock.
With all of that said, I want to note that ADV's dub of episode four of Eva, "Hedgehog's Dilemma," was a noticeable improvement over the first three. This is encouraging, and especially so because this, the first episode of Eva without combat, is where the series starts to show its real interest—the dark territory of its characters' personal lives. But the demands on the actors will only become greater as the show progresses. For now, you may want to make up your own mind about Eva by purchasing ADV's subtitled VHS release or closed-captioned LD. What I say now is not meant to be some sort of write-off of the dub—how could I do that, when, with its lower price, it is meant to be the version that more anime fans will buy, that most will see? My concern is what will happen with a show whose English release is, after all, still in its early stages. Where is it going? What will it convey? Will ADV's Eva be the mask or the face?
—Carl Gustav Horn
